Superstition: Social Justice Greatest Obstacle

This week marked the second anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and as I'm sure most people reading this will agree with, it's not a particularly joyful commemoration.

A social justice movement that started with a lot of promise, focusing on the right issues (i.e., income inequality between the 1% and the 99%), and spreading like wildfire across the country and much of the world, ended up fizzling out without accomplishing anything of significance.

For many years now I've been observing this phenomenon, whereas the economic and social conditions for the 99 percent of us continue to deteriorate at an accelerated rate, while the top one percent accumulates an unprecedented (and obscene) level of wealth and (political) power by taking advantage of a rigged system, while the population seems to remain eerily passive, or incapable of organizing a cohesive social justice movement capable of counterbalancing the onslaught from the Oligarchy.

Let me acknowledge that many readers may find the use of that word, Oligarchy, grating, but I argue that if that is the case, then that may help explain the situation we find ourselves in.

Let me use a couple of references to illustrate this point...

Shocking New Research Reveals Obama's Legacy Could Be an America of Aristocrats and Peons

Inequality experts Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez reveal the biggest gap between rich and poor ever recorded by economists.

New research [PDF] from inequality experts Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez has revealed that we now have the biggest gap between the rich and rest of America since economists began tracking data a century ago.

This isn’t supposed to happen following an economic crisis. After the Great Depression, Roosevelt’s New Deal programs worked to prevent wealth from piling back up at the top. And over the past two decades, the percentage of income claimed by the wealthy dropped after each recession. But in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the top 1 percent has gobbled up nearly all of the income gains in the first three years of the “recovery"— a stupifying 95 percent. Economic inequality is even worse than it was before the crash. In fact, last year the rich took home the largest share of income since 1917 with the exception of only one year: 1928.

The emphasis is mine

Here's another illustration that points to an Oligarchical elite...

Secret Quarter-Billion-Dollar Koch Brothers Political Operation Revealed

The top 1 percent has an investment in destroying middle-class America.

Politico.com, the Washington insider website, has the money-in-politics scoop of the year: It has unmasked a previously unknown political money laundering operation, set up by the energy billionaires and libertarian Koch brothers, that raised $256 million and secretly spent almost all of it last year against Democrats.

The “Koch brothers’ secret bank,” which is what the website calls the Virginia-based group, whose formal name is Freedom Partners, is the glue that has been holding together the right-wing pantheon of pro-corporate, anti-regulatory, anti-Obama, anti-labor front groups that are against everything from healthcare reform to labor unions to financial market reform to progressive taxation.

Anyways, I could keep adding references ad infinitum, but I'll use those two in support of my argument about the current system being an Oligarchy, in the final analysis.

So given this reality, and given the increased brutality of the system as it becomes more oppressive, wouldn't it make sense that a strong social justice movement would arise in resistance?

Well, that's what I initially saw with the Occupy Wall Street movement, even thought I think it was ten-plus years late since the minute the blatant power-grab by the Oligarchy took place right after 9/11, there should have been a massive outcry accompanied by a resistance movement.

But here's the thing... I'm fully aware that probably the vast majority of people see that type of on-the-streets protests movement inefficient and futile, but the more troubling thing is that given the situation at hand, the left seems incapable of organizing at all; at least to the level it should in order to present a credible counterbalance to the Neoliberal Oligarchy.

I argue (and have been arguing for years) that one of the main reasons for that is because a large-enough segment of the population believes the "myths" propagated by the Oligarchy.

Here's how Bill Moyers describes this phenomenon in "The Eight Stages of Successful Social Movements": During stage one (or normal times), a critical problem that violates widely held values exists, but the general public is unaware of it; only a few people are concerned.

I'll stop at this stage (stage one), because I think it perfectly illustrate the reason why the left seems to be stuck in gear when it comes to being able to launch the type of resistance/social justice movement capable of taking on the Oligarchy.

I argue that there are three major reasons social justice movements remain stunted.  One reason is that the Security/Police State actively works to thwart any successful movement from getting off the ground.

I'm sure readers are familiar with the coordinated suppression of OWS by Homeland Security and local governments around the country; with the infiltration, surveillance, and psychological operations.

Either way, this has been the policy of the Security State for decades, as reported in "COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story."

From its inception, the FBI has operated on the doctrine that the "preliminary stages of organization and preparation" must be frustrated, well before there is any clear and present danger of "revolutionary radicalism."

At its most extreme dimension, political dissidents have been eliminated outright or sent to prison for the rest of their lives. There are quite a number of individuals who have been handled in that fashion.

Many more, however, were "neutralized" by intimidation, harassment, discrediting, snitch jacketing, a whole assortment of authoritarian and illegal tactics.

The emphasis is mine

The second reason, I argue, is what I describe as induced or manufactured economic insecurity, which is mainly the result of the imposition of Neoliberalism.  As workers are stripped off human and constitutional rights, and as their economic security is threatened (as a result), they then tend to focus more on day-to-day survival and economic viability, leaving them with little time to engage in the type of critical thinking necessary to figure out the true nature of the system.

And thus, although a critical problem that violates widely held values exists, they remain unable to understand it fully.

The third component of course is propaganda.  Let me clarify one point that seems to sometimes derail the discussion about this issue:  The massive propaganda Americans are subjected to is not being propagated by some sort of Junta.  Instead, it is a cultural phenomenon that results from corporate media conglomeration.

I argue that both, the level and effectiveness of the propaganda we are being subjected to has never been higher in our history...  And if so, then it is worth mentioning the 1930's Institute for Propaganda Analysis:

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) was a U.S.-based organization composed of social scientists, opinion leaders, historians, educators, and journalists. Created in 1937 by Kirtley Mather, Edward A. Filene, and Clyde R. Miller, the IPA formed with the general concern that increased amounts of propaganda were decreasing the public’s ability to develop their own critical thoughts. The purpose of the IPA was to spark rational thinking and provide a guide to help the public have well-informed discussions on current issues. “To teach people how to think rather than what to think.” The IPA focused on domestic propaganda issues that might become possible threats to the democratic ways of life.

The emphasis is mine

I argue that today we are facing the same (or even greater) challenge when it comes to the decrease in the public's ability to develop the type of critical thinking skills necessary to protect our democratic way of life (or whatever is left of it), and much of it is due to the effects of propaganda.

Finally, as I think about this situation, one thing that comes to mind is something I read in the autobiography of Frederick Douglass regarding how slaveholders did everything in their power to prevent slaves from learning to read.

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

-- Frederick Douglass  

Some have argued that the problem is not that people are being subjected to propaganda, and hence don't know the true nature of the system, but that day-to-day survival concerns prevents them from engaging in movement-building.

I understand that point... But what I see is that yes, lots and lots of people are either aware of the situation, or are fast awakening to it (as the oppression increases), but when they try to connect under a common understanding, the system purposely short-circuits the connection through multiple means, including co-option (i.e., political parties establishments front groups), propaganda, induced/manufactured economic insecurity, and truth suppression tactics.

And many times this results in the phenomena of Groupthink, which at times is akin to religious fundamentalism, hence superstition.

In 1948, behavioural psychologist B.F. Skinner published an article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, in which he described his pigeons exhibiting what appeared to be superstitious behaviour. One pigeon was making turns in its cage, another would swing its head in a pendulum motion, while others also displayed a variety of other behaviours. Because these behaviours were all done ritualistically in an attempt to receive food from a dispenser, even though the dispenser had already been programmed to release food at set time intervals regardless of the pigeons' actions, Skinner believed that the pigeons were trying to influence their feeding schedule by performing these actions. He then extended this as a proposition regarding the nature of superstitious behaviour in humans.

~Snip~

Despite challenges to Skinner's interpretation of the root of his pigeons' superstitious behaviour, his conception of the reinforcement schedule has been used to explain superstitious behaviour in humans. Originally, in Skinner's animal research, "some pigeons responded up to 10,000 times without reinforcement when they had originally been conditioned on an intermittent reinforcement basis.

This last point is very sensitive, but also very important.  One thing that comes to mind when I read this about superstition behavior is the belief by many that our political system is still viable; in other words, that it is responsive to the will of the electorate.

I argue that the political system is responsive mainly to the interests of the one percent, and therefore it is highly compromised by influence-peddling corruption.

And if that is true (accurate) then believing that only by voting or being engaged in the political system as it is, is going to meet one's expectations (regarding good governance, honesty, proper regulatory oversight, etc.), despite ample evidence to the contrary, is akin to believing in superstition.

Again, and as I stated many times before, I'm not arguing that people should not engage in the political system, even if it is compromised (by corruption).  To the contrary, because it is compromised, we should redouble our efforts when it comes to politics...

But that's only one side of the coin; the other side is that we need to also work at addressing the root causes of the corruption, of the dysfunction.

And I argue that the best way of doing that is trough a robust and cohesive and long-lasting (ongoing, nonstop) social justice movement, around a common understanding about the root causes of dysfunction: Oligarchy; induced/manufactured economic insecurity, oppression and subjugation (due to the Neoliberalism); propaganda.

P.S. There is a small group of users who regularly engage in disruptive behavior in my diaries' discussion threads.  I would like to ask people interested in serious discussion to avoid engaging these few folks in any way.  They usually engage in insults, mockery, and fallacies intended to derail discussion, and post several dozens messages each.  I know this may be annoying to some readers and may prompt them to engage these folks.  I highly recommend that they be ignored so we can focus on intelligent discussion.

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